Metaphor Representation of Chinese-English Bilingual at Different Second Language Proficiency: An ERP Study

In this paper we applied event-related potentials (ERP) to study the metaphor representation of English-Chinese Bilingual, to see whether the second language proficiency can be an effect on their relationship. The results of this experiment yield evidence that there are no significant differences of Chinese Metaphor representation between group1 (CET6>600) and group2 (CET6<430). The left hemisphere was more involved than the right hemisphere during processing of English metaphors for both group1 and group2. The processing of English metaphor consumed more mental resources for group 2 than for group1. The processing of English metaphor consumed more mental resources than Chinese metaphor for group 2. The English metaphor and Chinese metaphor of both groups are common representation. However, the degree of common representation is varied according to the language proficiency level. The higher language proficiency is, the higher degree of common presentation is.